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notwithoutmyanus posted:If China is moving into Mexico now, they'd be far too late. This trend is over a decade old, easily. And it's again not *just* Mexico, but also Vietnam and other countries.. It's China trying to catch up here and I don't think it'll work in their favor at all. It's not about money or being a coherent economic strategy, China likes engaging the US through proxies—take for example, Canada: it's why they kidnapped 2 Canadians, interfere in their politics; or Australia: tariffs on their exports, their batshit insane "14 grievances" Mexico has been a competing ground for China because of Mexico's complex relationship with the US. Nothing easier to play off an imagined colonial/colonized framework by engaging on this front. At least cheap DiDi rides are nice.
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Nov 8, 2023 08:32
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A thing I did not know of: https://twitter.com/CollinSLKoh/status/1722395083562266775 More contemporaneous coverage: https://thediplomat.com/2018/08/a-closer-look-at-the-asean-china-single-draft-south-china-sea-code-of-conduct/ quote:Most significantly China’s proposal on cooperation on the marine economy states that cooperation is to be carried out by the littoral states “and shall not be conducted in cooperation with companies from countries outside the region.” In contrast, Malaysia proposed that nothing in the COC “shall affect… rights or ability of the Parties to conduct activities with foreign countries or private entities of their own choosing.” 2018 mid-Trump mid-Duterte was probably the best time to push their luck, sure. It probably instead went a long way to convincing the diplomatic corps of the various attendees that the Chinese negotiators were either basically unserious or intended nothing good. One issue is that ASEAN itself is deeply unbalanced: Indonesia has 270 million people. Malaysia has 30 million. These are not countries that will agree to exclude partners from outside the region against each other, never mind China (the FPDA continues to exist and stage exercises relatively frequently, for example).
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Nov 9, 2023 19:05
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https://x.com/axios/status/1722596743999590469?s=46 I'm honestly confused by this one. Anyone have a clue? Did the Chinese respect the antagonism? The US show of strength/resolve? Or it's just a lovely poll?
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Nov 10, 2023 05:48
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i fly airplanes posted:https://x.com/axios/status/1722596743999590469?s=46 https://twitter.com/vshih2/status/1722653123477750063 which has been going on for a while https://twitter.com/CGTNOfficial/status/1719874462668161373 https://twitter.com/XHNews/status/1721803681052701139 https://twitter.com/XHNews/status/1721360984592539981 https://twitter.com/globaltimesnews/status/1721403684234649982 https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3239737/china-salutes-us-flying-tiger-veterans-and-relatives-friendship-mission ahead of the upcoming APEC
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Nov 10, 2023 06:07
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The USA population is very easy to sway one direction or the other. Is becase is very patriotic or other reason. Everyone please wave your usa flag. And I am sure China is the same, It will be for different reasons. If you are the leader of China or USA, it will never be a problem to make your population hate some other random country. It may even require less than a few months. At the same time, the citizens of USA are never going to stop buying lots of cheap products. And I don't see any other country making them than china. Even if the factory is in Vietnam, or the warehouse in Chiguagua. Is kinda a beneficial relationship for both parts. USA can print money and buy cool chinese poo poo with it. China gets a lot of freshly printed dollars to buy poo poo or maybe build a financial industry, I don't know. But then, you have your average USA president looking at the trade deficit with sad eyes. And that may trigger that USA president to savotage it, to make the red numbers go black. It does not matter if the red numbers are meaningless because USA has infinite money, because they own the machine that can print the world money.
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Nov 10, 2023 13:51
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In the absence of an Asia thread: the Myanmese civil war seems to have taken a turn against the junta: https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/losing-ground-rebel-alliance-myanmar-junta-faces-biggest-test-since-coup-2023-11-10/ https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-67305690 quote:For the past year the Chinese government has been pressing the military government to do more to shut down the scam centres, which are largely run by Chinese syndicates. They have become an embarrassment to Beijing after widespread publicity about the brutal treatment of the trafficking victims trapped in them.
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Nov 10, 2023 16:47
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I like looking at the person featured in the cover photo and thinking "this is the outfit you put the character in to make sure you know he is in the worst humans in history club"
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Nov 10, 2023 18:31
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https://twitter.com/JChengWSJ/status/1723626938915553352 Beijing is getting irritated: https://twitter.com/FMangosingINQ/status/1723244755348578760 KAMANDAG 7 is not improving the mood, presumably. ronya fucked around with this message at 12:01 on Nov 12, 2023 |
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Nov 12, 2023 11:58
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Is one way for china to build a large number of enemies. That will be trouble, for china.
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Nov 12, 2023 14:21
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"Why should the Phillipines do something about the south china sea dispute?" Because they're IN it motherfucker. The dispute is WITH THEM (and like a dozen other countries). China's the one really causing trouble and picking fights. What's less certain is what exactly the US's place in the fight, I guess our octopus is tempting out a fish with a chicken leg or trying to hit it with a club? Octopuses can just go into the water though? We have ships in the area hangin' around because I think we want to be there if there's any fightin' to be done. We've strongly implied we would protect Taiwan, that may go for just any military expansionism, America would seek to curb. But exactly how far things will go and what happens when China decides to play bumper cars, who knows.
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Nov 12, 2023 16:45
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Well US ships loitering in the area will impact China's risk assesment. Nothing really stops China from boarding and seizing Philippine supply ships or imposing a blockade on the area - on a purely technical and economic level they have that capability. If the Phillipines stood entirely alone they would likely back down quickly or be beaten down in short order If push comes to shove. Either way the issue ends up in a UN committee to be forgotten while China retains effective control of the area. But what would the US do? Probably neither China or the Phillipines know for sure but that uncertainty might embolden the Phillipine government to gamble while China might be more restrained since they almost certainly do not want a wider or protracted conflict. They want the Phillipines to leave the area - not start a war.
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Nov 12, 2023 17:29
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Some glib sketching: ASEAN in its formative years was dominated by strongmen who spent long durations in office (Suharto, Mahathir, Lee, Marcos, & Prem all spent more than ten years in their respective top seats), which gave rise to a consensus-oriented manner of resolving territorial disputes. By which we mean consensus amongst each country's governing elite to sideline their own respective territorial nationalists and to keep such disputes out of the domain of political nationalism, not consensus with their people, mind. The nature of the give-and-take is that each country understands that the governments of other countries have to deal with their nationalists somehow, so some mixture of public concessions and discreet exchanges ("quiet diplomacy") is prioritized. Territorial nationalism is a costly way to indulge domestic appetites, in a very literal sense that almost none of the countries involved want the expense of an armed forces capable of power projection. These countries are not anti-nationalist but favour red meat in other forms. This is less true of its composition post-expansion to Indochina and post-democratization in Indonesia, but by and large the ASEAN norm has come to shape Vietnam/Cambodia than the other way around. Observe the lackadaisical jaw-jaw around the Myanmese civil war. And Subianto types in Jakarta have not seen nationalism translate to political success, even with the indignity of losing Timor Leste. China, on the other hand, feels like it should be a great power entitled to hegemony over its backyard. It is by now much more powerful than India, much less any of the Southeast Asian states; the idea that Vietnam (now the country with the highest military headcount, after joining ASEAN in 1995) could present a challenge today if Beijing really wanted to storm Hanoi again is doubtful. Since it is so much more powerful, efforts to stymie its ambitions are illogical and must be the result of irresponsible leaders promising the impossible to their constituents. A greater show of force is called for! The other country places a premium on access to sinecure offices, like attache offices and informal exchanges and track 1.x whatevers, so access to these must be deployed punitively to shape their conduct! So the past decade of China's increasing assertiveness in Southeast Asia has led to considerable confusion - ASEAN prioritizing discreet exchanges and quid pro quo concessions are instead seen as recognitions of a position of weakness, and when the former countries don't see expected reciprocations materialize and discard previous concessions, China sees irrationality and untrustworthiness. My guess is that eventually China will have to blink first due to its domestic messaging on defending Chinese overseas, plus the large number of ethnic Chinese in Southeast Asia: too many to meaningfully censor. Eventually there will be an incident (there are anti-Chinese pogroms every few years of varying intensities; the magnitude is just a dice roll of chance) and the domestic ethnonationalism Beijing has spent so long nurturing will compel it to do something it might prefer not to prioritize: exactly that problem ASEAN has spent so long evading. ronya fucked around with this message at 18:33 on Nov 12, 2023 |
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Nov 12, 2023 18:26
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Owling Howl posted:Well US ships loitering in the area will impact China's risk assesment. Nothing really stops China from boarding and seizing Philippine supply ships or imposing a blockade on the area - on a purely technical and economic level they have that capability. Generally speaking, Beijing has been cool with letting personnel, supplies and food/water pass. The story of Sierra Madre as a tool in this territorial dispute is pretty well known, and also well documented over the years. What they have as a red line though (and have communicated said line publicly and loudly) is sending building supplies to repair-reinforce the structure of the ship. Which is something that Manila has been trying to do lately, escalating the situation there. The Chinese response is therefore completely predictable. So far. If I would wager a guess, I think that Manila feels emboldened enough to do this now as a way of keeping the pressure on the US, given Ukraine and Palestine taking the spotlight away from SCS. Dante80 fucked around with this message at 18:45 on Nov 12, 2023 |
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Nov 12, 2023 18:41
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I think Xi Jinping personally being a fairly avid nationalist would itself carry a lot of weight, and a lot of Chinese projection of power and assertiveness/aggression has been the manifestation of his consolidation of power.
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Nov 12, 2023 18:53
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Dante80 posted:Generally speaking, Beijing has been cool with letting personnel, supplies and food/water pass. The story of Sierra Madre as a tool in this territorial dispute is pretty well known, and also well documented over the years. Have the Philipines built facilities/artificial islands in the sea, or is that just a China/Vietnam thing?
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Nov 12, 2023 20:34
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tractor fanatic posted:Have the Philipines built facilities/artificial islands in the sea, or is that just a China/Vietnam thing? I think that the crashed boat was a forerunner to building stuff on that isle itself and to act as a claim on the nearby area. Again this is simply something I've seen, not sure if it is accurate.
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Nov 12, 2023 20:38
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Josef bugman posted:I think that the crashed boat was a forerunner to building stuff on that isle itself and to act as a claim on the nearby area. They beached it 20 years ago. Have they done anything else since?
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Nov 12, 2023 20:40
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Anyway even if China were being even handed, the point about not bringing in supplies to repair the boat is not about maintaining the status quo, it's to make the Sierra Madre unsustainable and force the Philippines off the island.
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Nov 12, 2023 20:42
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Dante80 posted:If I would wager a guess, I think that Manila feels emboldened enough to do this now as a way of keeping the pressure on the US, given Ukraine and Palestine taking the spotlight away from SCS. Marcos very quickly made a deal with the U.S. to rebuild a U.S. naval and air presence on island. So, I have no doubt a lot of this is calculated to irk the Chinese with the understanding our increased presence there in the near future will be enough to deter China from doing anything too drastic.
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Nov 12, 2023 21:43
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tractor fanatic posted:Have the Philipines built facilities/artificial islands in the sea, or is that just a China/Vietnam thing? They have occupied and built limited stuff on some, since the late 60s mostly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loaita_Island https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanshan_Island https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_York_Island https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thitu_Island https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_Cay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loaita_Cay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Island_(South_China_Sea) Thitu Island has seen the most of development recently. AlternateNu posted:Marcos very quickly made a deal with the U.S. to rebuild a U.S. naval and air presence on island. So, I have no doubt a lot of this is calculated to irk the Chinese with the understanding our increased presence there in the near future will be enough to deter China from doing anything too drastic. Yep, that is my thought too, more or less. Dante80 fucked around with this message at 21:59 on Nov 12, 2023 |
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Nov 12, 2023 21:48
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I don't understand China position here. Other than "might make right". That place is 800km from their territory and inside Philiphines legal waters. What the gently caress.
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Nov 12, 2023 22:34
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AlternateNu posted:Marcos very quickly made a deal with the U.S. to rebuild a U.S. naval and air presence on island. So, I have no doubt a lot of this is calculated to irk the Chinese with the understanding our increased presence there in the near future will be enough to deter China from doing anything too drastic. I work with a lot of older people from Philippines and they all say it was a huge mistake to have let that go in the first place.
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Nov 12, 2023 22:48
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Tei posted:I don't understand China position here. Other than "might make right". Sounds like you understand it well enough, at least as far as their most recent internal turn towards nationalism and shows of force is concerned.
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Nov 13, 2023 04:32
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China is being dumb as poo poo because they had a real opportunity with Manila during the last administration. Bongbong may have spent time in the U.S, but he’s an illiberal kleptocrat that could easily have cozied up to Beijing given the right incentives. That’s out the window now. Beijing may be banking on Sara Duterte but the VP doesn’t do poo poo (just ask Leni Robredo) and the next presidential election isn’t until 2028.
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Nov 13, 2023 04:48
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Is there a Philippines thread? Somewhere for me to be depressed about Philippine politics sort of like the JP thread? Or is it just not important enough to the SA demographic?
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Nov 13, 2023 04:52
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a poster from manila updates the cspam asia thread with phillippines news regularly
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Nov 13, 2023 04:54
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Ogmius815 posted:Is there a Philippines thread? Somewhere for me to be depressed about Philippine politics sort of like the JP thread? Or is it just not important enough to the SA demographic? welcome fellow "D&D has country threads that should maybe be area threads" friend excuse me while i go post Kazakhstan news in the "eastern europe" thread since, at least, the news in question is europe-ish facing, if against a backdrop of other "woooooo ten years of belt and road projects" news that is arguably more relevant but less amusing
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Nov 13, 2023 08:03
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Ogmius815 posted:Is there a Philippines thread? Somewhere for me to be depressed about Philippine politics sort of like the JP thread? Or is it just not important enough to the SA demographic? There is one but I don't think it has been active over the past year. We talked before about combining several threads into a more generic East Asia thread (giving it some kind of prosperity sphere gimmick name to start) but the general consensus was that doing so would end up with that thread just becoming the China thread eventually so we didn't do it. The Korea/Japan/Philippines threads are mostly dead (minus a assassination) and the Tourism and Travel threads for them and SE Asia sometimes post news so people probably get more of their up-to-date info from them now.
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Nov 13, 2023 08:38
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Looks like the renewables buildout has finally exceeded demand increases, and along with the slowdown in construction and the ev deployment, China is at peak CO2.
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Nov 13, 2023 18:23
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India's initial bet on attacking distribution problems has paled massively next to China investing heavily in manufacturing more panels; no Swanson's law equivalent for long distance power transmission. In the end pumped hydro is cheaper and involves no reliance on other countries.
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Nov 13, 2023 18:52
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India vs China is an important story of different developmental models and I'd love recommendations on any literature on the subject.
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Nov 13, 2023 18:57
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ronya posted:India's initial bet on attacking distribution problems has paled massively next to China investing heavily in manufacturing more panels; no Swanson's law equivalent for long distance power transmission. In the end pumped hydro is cheaper and involves no reliance on other countries. I've never really looked into it, but is pumped hydro really viable for a large country like China or India? Seems like if the geography can favor pumped hydro, it can just favor regular hydro in the first place.
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Nov 13, 2023 19:01
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tractor fanatic posted:I've never really looked into it, but is pumped hydro really viable for a large country like China or India? Seems like if the geography can favor pumped hydro, it can just favor regular hydro in the first place. well - a slightly more skeptical take is that pumped hydro falls into that niche that China is conveniently seeking to fill, namely infrastructure projects that can plausibly be high quality and meet national (energy) security goals all at once. Specifically pumped hydro has lower water demands than a conventional hydropower dam and is less affected by droughts like the one that hammered China in 2022. That drought took the sheen off a lot of the costly hydro projects and forced a humiliating return to coal. But now here comes pumped storage to save the day, in coordination with massive photovoltaics rollout. So cue new dams that would not normally otherwise be built, in parts of China that struggle with water and would not normally otherwise be able to rely on dams for power. there are now a lot of such pumped storage projects planned: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/05/02/climate/hydroelectric-power-energy.html. I don't intend any deep analysis (there's a renewables thread); I'm glibly alluding to Modi's International Solar Alliance philosophy of "the sun is always shining somewhere on the planet" vs China's oncoming PV tsunami. In a small way it mirrors the tendency of Indian political economy to focus on distributive questions vs Chinese political economy to lean on massive mobilization ronya fucked around with this message at 19:49 on Nov 13, 2023 |
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Nov 13, 2023 19:44
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https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2023/11/15/2003809219quote:The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) on Wednesday agreed to use public polling to decide on a coalition presidential ticket, with the result to be announced on Saturday. Well I'm still only gonna believe it when I see it. If Ko doesn't get to be on top I don't think he would be willing to be number 2 when the VP has the same amount of powers as the American system.
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Nov 15, 2023 07:23
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it would be politically suicidal for Ko to run on a junior ticket given that a KMT government in the next term will certainly seek to undo CIPAS asset seizures and thereby mitigate its need for a junior partner to begin with the funny outcome would be a Ko-Hou ticket which the KMT would, themselves, reject this is arguably the only possible outcome that sustains a third party protest vote for another cycle: to be not blamed for walking away, and yet to also not sign up as junior partner without getting something major in return (it is not enough that the governing party have been in power for so long; cough Lib Dems cough)
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Nov 15, 2023 07:39
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ronya posted:China, on the other hand, feels like it should be a great power entitled to hegemony over its backyard. It is by now much more powerful than India, much less any of the Southeast Asian states; the idea that Vietnam (now the country with the highest military headcount, after joining ASEAN in 1995) could present a challenge today if Beijing really wanted to storm Hanoi again is doubtful. Since it is so much more powerful, efforts to stymie its ambitions are illogical and must be the result of irresponsible leaders promising the impossible to their constituents. A greater show of force is called for! The other country places a premium on access to sinecure offices, like attache offices and informal exchanges and track 1.x whatevers, so access to these must be deployed punitively to shape their conduct! Beijing wouldn't have a chance in hell of taking Hanoi. This is crazy talk.
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Nov 15, 2023 14:34
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Charlz Guybon posted:Beijing wouldn't have a chance in hell of taking Hanoi. This is crazy talk. Not to mention they've already previously tried invading Vietnam.
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Nov 15, 2023 17:04
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My sense is that the VPA is a pre-Desert Storm Iraq army largely predating the precision munitions revolution and so its sprawling headcount is likely to be ineffective in a contemporary land conflict with the PLA. And, its military modernization has largely halted since 2016 whereas the PLA has only accelerated it. Granted, I am not a mil expert. But it's not really relevant whether it is true, anyway, since the point is to gloss what China believes. ronya posted:https://twitter.com/vshih2/status/1722653123477750063 some coverage: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/14/world/asia/china-xi-propaganda-america.html e: in other APEC reactions - https://twitter.com/jruwitch/status/1724804072652611853 (parody of official awards for Chinese municipal governments for disease control, here awarded to SF) ronya fucked around with this message at 06:32 on Nov 16, 2023 |
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Nov 16, 2023 05:27
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https://twitter.com/MacroPoloChina/status/1724979597492564045 In Chinese: http://news.cn/politics/leaders/2023-11/16/c_1129977705.htm https://twitter.com/Sino_Market/status/1724980610626957485
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Can't imagine Chinese nationalists are going to like 'China does not seek to surpass or replace the US,' even if said as a platitude to Biden.
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Nov 16, 2023 09:12
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